Continental Der Baron Projekt tyre review

Tyres, of course, are almost as personal as clothes. So, so much depends on where you ride, what you ride, how you ride – and so on.

To give you some sort of an idea about where I’m coming from. Around the dismayingly steep, soggy-yet-grippy (sometimes), slippery but gritty (often) open moorland and splashy and steep rocky woodland of the Calder valley in winter, my preferred tyres of choice are probably Schwalbe’s Magic Mary up front with the venerable Hans Dampf at the back. Heck, I like them so much that’s what I run pretty much all the time, everywhere.

I’m not a tyre fetishist who changes tyres as soon as the first spring flowers bloom, or the first time I see a grey cloud. I tend to be a sort of fit and forget until it wears out sort of a chap. Although I admit to thinking that skinwalls look snazzy. Does that make me a bad person?

That’s me. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve tried more than a few tyres in my time, and there are some which have proven to be the Schwalbe duo’s equal, for sure – but those are my benchmarks.

The Conti’s

Black Chilli. It’s supposed to confer unreal grip as well as low rolling resistance and excellent tyre life – pretty much the holy grail of tyreage. ProTection Apex is supposed to give additional protection to punctures, and more support. The Apex layer is a separate stabilisation layer (derived from motorbike tech) integrated into the sidewall of the tyre; the ProTection bit means 4/240 TPI (threads per inch) in the sidewalls to help prevent impact and abrasion tears and so forth, and 3/180 TPI under the tread.

Apparently ‘Projekt’ is a sort of ‘race spec.’ name. These things should be gnarly. Indeed, Continental’s website calls it ‘the enduro baron’, and it is endorsed by the Atherton siblings, who know a thing or two about riding bikes. They say it’s principally designed for loose, wet, muddy conditions, which is handy, as it’s been fairly horrible around here for the past few months.

I put these tyres on my hardtail for a couple of reasons. The main one is that it’s the bike I’d be spending most time on in the winter, and it’s also a good way to try to get more of a feel for a tyre unencumbered by unsparing weight issues and suspension gubbins. If I was truly dedicated to the craft I’d have run it on a fully rigid I suppose, but I’m not a complete idiot.

Tyre weight for both tyres was 1002g and 1003g for these 29×2.4 versions – pretty much on the money. These are Enduro tyres, after all. Or, in my case, gnarly trail tyres (admission – I raced no enduros for the duration of the test). They went on and inflated tubeless with no issues onto Easton ARC 27 rims, and were a shade over 2.4in wide at the carcass once seated.

On the trail

Riding to the start of the trail, there was a lot of road buzz – I felt like I was being chased by a swarm of Barry White’s bees – and these are not the fastest rolling of tyres. But then, they’re not supposed to be. The scrabbly climb that started my off-roading proper on these things demonstrated to me that straight ahead climbing traction was there in spades. But it was when I then started descending that the tyre’s true nature became more apparent.

Just off this scrabbly climb, the trail falls away to the left, to a couple of sweepy singletrack choices made in 2020 by some industrious young Lockdown Groms. There are are some extremely wet, loose, steep switchbacks, with catch-berms aplenty. The odd drop-of, and a lot of buttock clenching injury potential. Previously, I’d start high, and drop in to make as little of the turn as possible. I’d need to weight my front wheel to scary degrees (for me) to even have a hope of getting it round, and I’d just have to leave my rear wheel to its own devices. But when I dropped in with Der Barons, I had so much more grip it was ridiculous. I could stay more centred on the bike, I felt like I has more control. I could just charge straight in, without thinking of where I wanted to be once gravity and slither had had its way. On corners around which I thought I’d be a complete goner, I miraculously stayed upright. It was ace. This was mostly thanks to the tyre at the front, of course. But at the rear, cornering, straightline grip and traction under acceleration and braking when descending also felt very good.

The tyres cleared extremely well, too. Plenty of widely spaced nobbles that didn’t want to hoard all that lovely mud; rather, they’d festoon the countryside, my face and my back with gleeful abandon if I forgot to put the mudguard on.

Time after time, ride after ride, I’ve been surprised and delighted by the confidence and control that the tyres have given me when riding down stupid, stupid sloppy jank.

Perhaps a corollary to all this is a slightly less supple sidewall? At speed, perhaps the tyre feedback isn’t as good as others? Perhaps. It seems that the ‘supportive, yet supple sidewall’ is a marketing cliche that Conti (or anyone else) has yet to crack. But I can’t say I’ve noticed it overmuch through the past few months. Letting one or two PSI out of my tyres has definitely helped, and was rewarded with noticeably less squirming than if I’d run other tyres at such low pressures. The downside to this is that – especially when used on the rear – road-buzz increased, as did the effort required to move them around, but I felt that it was an acceptable trade-off for all of that lovely grip. And even at lower pressures, tyre-wear has also been good, given the amount of abuse I’ve given the pair of them – not least the schlepping to and from the trails.

It’s not just around Calderdale that the tyre has impressed, either. I recommended them to a Lake-District friend, who bought one for his front wheel and felt the need to eulogise at some length about it after his first ride, and repeatedly thereafter. So it’s not just me.

Overall

No, these aren’t the easiest rolling tyre, especially on the rear. But wear has been excellent so far, grip and traction has been absolutely phenomenal (especially on the front) and I’m looking forward to seeing how these tyres perform when the trails actually start to dry out. No, I’m not one for unnecessarily switching out tyres – but on my bike, these are staying firmly put.